Prof Tony Holohan’s withdrawal from the presidential race is a mercy – not just for him, but for the rest of us.
We are spared the bear-baiting with the cervical-cancer controversy and the pandemic, the performative outrage and vile social media that would have plunged all concerned into a sewer stripped of nuance and context.
That Covid still scratches the national psyche hardly helps.
A recent five-year anniversary Mass for a Kildare man who died during lockdown morphed into the warm, crowded service denied to his family in 2020. His favourite music was sung and the same eulogies given by his adult children five years ago at his lonely graveside were delivered to a packed congregation. What was surprising for a five-year memorial was how immediate and raw it felt.
It was an experience hardly unique to Ireland, but it is Holohan’s burden to be forever associated with it. That his wife Emer was also buried under the harshest Covid rules would not have spared him from the vitriol. Inevitably, some were salivating at the idea of using his appearances as Covid inquisitions.
Which raises the question – again – of why people put their heads above the presidential parapet.
Holohan must have felt he had done the state some service. He had answered the call for a calm, firm, trustworthy medical leader to guide Ireland through an unprecedented public health crisis, while attending to his dying wife – all of which surely made him the very definition of a president.
But no leader survives those multiple levels of hell without making mistakes – and Holohan’s reluctance to admit to any mistakes sits badly with the mood of the times.
Issues can be argued – as he did in his memoir – but few will listen. They don’t want to hear ifs or buts or blame being ascribed elsewhere, even if it belongs there. They want to hear humility and unconditional admissions: “Yes, I made a mistake.” Ill-wishers will grab it as vindication of course – “Hah, told you he had blood on his hands.”
But unlike other hapless hopefuls, Holohan would have known all the questions about to be catapulted at him. His USP would have been that of someone intimately familiar with the ferocity, filthy betrayals and short-termism of politics without being an actual politician.
Even before his withdrawal, the weekend’s media was distinguished by the startling number of pundits trotting out several of those same points as reasons Bertie Ahern should proceed with confidence.
He has the experience, the likability and the peace process in his arms, they say. He has been interrogated to the max. No question on earth would surprise the one who – to quote the revered Blackadder – is as cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University.
And time, as we know, can soften even the sharpest memories. It’s 17 years since he was taoiseach, 13 since he resigned from Fianna Fáil following the Mahon tribunal finding that he failed to account truthfully for payments of IR£165,000 made to accounts connected to him.
Anyone seeking signs of contrition might catch a 2018 Deutsche Welle “Conflict Zone” interview which sees him happily answering questions about the peace negotiations – until asked about the tribunal.
“Did you clear your name?” the interviewer asks.
“Yes, I did. I’m quite happy I cleared my name”, he answers.
But that wasn’t “truthful”, the interviewer says.
“The tribunal gave its views … and I gave my evidence. I was very happy with my evidence”, he replies, as if it were all just a matter of opinion. He ends it by getting up and leaving.
“A first on dwZone,” as DW’s Twitter link described it.
Since then, Micheál Martin – who sought to kick Ahern out of the party before he resigned – has consulted him about issues around the Northern Ireland protocol, acknowledging his “invaluable insights” and range of contacts.
When reminded of that threatened expulsion a few years ago, Martin said: “It’s 10 years on, I’m conscious of the contribution he has made to peace in the country. He made a very significant contribution.”
Leo Varadkar, who in the Dáil once described Ahern’s claims of wins on the horses as “a defence for drug dealers and pimps”, had also ratcheted down his tone by 2023, saying the remarks were made “at a particular point in time and if you look at the totality of Bertie Ahern’s career, you know, let’s not forget that he was one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement … I don’t think anyone can diminish the role that he played”.
Just a month ago, Ahern was at 5 per cent in an Irish Times/IpsosB&A presidency poll. Last Sunday he was up at 14 per cent, tying for third place with Mary Lou McDonald in a Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll.
Which brings us back to the old question: is there an optimum time for society to say, enough punishment, all that was at a particular point in time, look at the balance of his life? How many years? Does it matter if the offender has never acknowledged they did wrong in the first place?
As one professor leaves the stage, the professor of cunning hovers, batting his eyelashes, saying nothing, waiting, smiling and waiting.
